Because all you do is run around spamming your AoE abilities until you reach a boss. It's boring.

Which differs from other ARPGs exactly how?
Liking the graphics is highly subjective, it doesn't look anywhere near 10 years old and the particle effects of most skills are actually really good.

Don't compare multi million D3 cutscenes to PoE's overall graphics.
If you look at D3's ingame graphics, they aren't that different, i'd say overall D3 looks better (tho still not anything fancy), but skill effects are way better in PoE.

Hm, you went with a minion build so to speak. I might try that since I enjoy having the minions.

You seem to be going the minion route anyway. So I linked my strongest build previously.

As I said, once you fill out the core minion talents you can literally do anything from frost & fire to melee. There are actually melee minion master items in the game, yes I am not joking. Survival is through the roof with my linked build too.

You are not doing anything special or unique with the build you linked that can't work based around the one I linked or simply modifying your own.

Here is the level 50 build you linked, scaled to 65ish while filling out the minion talents: link

Just demonstrating the versatility you would already have accessible using your own linked build as a base.

But is it only chaos damage that bypasses energy shields or? I don't know this stuff really well. ._.

If you take CI you take no damage from chaos whatsoever. Not to your life or shield. It's immunity.

And yes, that is the catch-- Energy Shield becomes your life bar.

There are several benefits though;
1. Blood Rage would normally damage a player without chaos resist/immunity. Blood Rage dramatically speeds up the number of spells & damage. With CI Blood Rage becomes an "always on" buff.
2. Since Life is of no value with CI on gear, on the tree or in any other form, all points and gear can be focused on energy shield & damage.
3. It is possible to gain more energy shield than life as a Witch.
4. Energy shield can be regenerated far more quickly than Life.
5. Certain endgame Maps force players to take chaos damage over time as an instance wide debuff. CI makes one immune to these maps allowing an otherwise impossible degree of safety as the Maps & debuff scale higher.
6. One doesn't have to invest points into other chaos resist on the tree nor roll gear gear with chaos resist.

I am not attempting to sell you on CI. Merely explaining how and why it is a big deal in the game.

Can go full energy shield or life as you please really.

I don't know why but I'm not the kind of person to go build resistances.

Because all you do is run around spamming your AoE abilities until you reach a boss. It's boring.

Not completely correct, but I can agree that AoE abilities are most prevalent type used.

How does this differ from other ARGP's though? D2, D3, Torchlight, Torchlight 2. All these games function by throwing groups of mobs at you, frequently large groups. You use your AoE abilities to clear them out more often than not.

I don't get all the excitement over this game. It looks 10 years old, but I can get over that I guess, but the game play is just a massive AoE-fest. What am I missing here?

That's a bit like asking what makes FTL, To the Moon or Hotline Miami a hot fuss despite their lack of cutting edge graphics.

The main attraction of Path of Exile is the min/max-ing and stat crunching. Its a punitive, math based game like others in the genre such as Diablo, Titan Quest or Vagrant Story.

Excitement over swinging a sword is not really the point so much as being excited your build is able to swing 7.11 times a second, ignoring 93 cold resist while converting 50% of physical damage to cold, leeching back 6% of physical damage as life with a 76,345 evasion rating converted to armor.

Many people like these sort of games. /shrug

Originally Posted by Grogo

Can you explain what this means? What sort of ladder? How does it work?

Everyone in the hardcore league is competing for the top level position. Ranked as level and experience points. When and if someone dies they are dropped from the competition or league as it were.

This is announced in global chat such as, "Grogo (Grogo's Witch) #3 on the ladder has died!". For example.

Then everyone cheers/lolz as new people are constantly moving up and eventually falling off the ladder.

That and you don't really reach a point where you're like "ok this is what i want to do", since there's so much diversity.

Well, I usually have a concept for a build before I even start a character. It may stray here or there as needed, but if I'm planning on making a dual claw build, then that's my focus from the get go. Heck I have a Leaping Larry character whose focus is going to be the leap attack (he's a carryover from D2, which was a hilariously awesome build). Now, I may not pre-plan everything on the passive tree, since I'm still trying to get a full grasp on it (and I've been playing for a year).

That said, when i don't fully grasp something, i end up going for a balance, which is basicly what im doing with the passive skills tree.

One thing I noticed after installing other night is that you can't see how much damage you are doing numbers-wise...or can you? You know..when you hit a mob and see damage numbers above their heads....that's not an option?

I really like melee rangers because they get so many early level talents which are very strong for melee.

If I may comment; I noticed you took Stun Recovery just to the right of Finesse. While that is an awesome choice early game, might I suggest you repsec out of it later on and head toward Unwavering Stance along the bottom of the tree?

Unwavering Stance makes it so you can no longer evade, which you can't anyway with Iron Reflexes, but grants complete immunity to being stunned. Which is SUPER important for melee characters.

I highlighted the section of the tree I think worth considering for a DW ranger.

As a bonus the outlined clusters are all highly beneficial to your existing build as well. They are also along the travel path so there should ideally be few "dead levels" where you are not picking up some talents useful or multiplicative to progression.

One thing I noticed after installing other night is that you can't see how much damage you are doing numbers-wise...or can you? You know..when you hit a mob and see damage numbers above their heads....that's not an option?

I love this game, map looks quite...well, bad, but other that that, my only gripe are the attack animations, that I have found no way of stopping once i started the attack, so kiting anything with ranger was pretty hard, even with slow zombies and stuff. otherwise some really nice stuff.

It looks like they ripped their map straight from Diablo 2. Not quite sure why you're having a hard time kiting things as a ranger. I'm only at level 15 or so and I haven't had any issues as of yet. The potion of super speed helps out with that also.

Just an in your face Freezing Pulse Templar with decent defenses for most of the game. You'd rely on quest gems [easy to level/free] and mostly armor + energy shield gear. Also easy to work with and relatively cheap for a Templar.

Pretty flexible too. Easy to add more dex or str as need to the above build. Should be enough int to push through most of the game with no worries. Yet still have options open like dual totem, no totem, battery or full ES with regen.

It looks like they ripped their map straight from Diablo 2. Not quite sure why you're having a hard time kiting things as a ranger. I'm only at level 15 or so and I haven't had any issues as of yet. The potion of super speed helps out with that also.

its the fact, that I cant do hit n run quickly, the animations are quite long. maybe Im just used to short animations, or animations that dont prevent me from movement, like in diablo, maybe just takes some time adjusting, but heck, that boss in prison was pain to get shots between his hooks because the animation is so damn long.

Just an in your face Freezing Pulse Templar with decent defenses for most of the game. You'd rely on quest gems [easy to level/free] and mostly armor + energy shield gear. Also easy to work with and relatively cheap for a Templar.

Pretty flexible too. Easy to add more dex or str as need to the above build. Should be enough int to push through most of the game with no worries. Yet still have options open like dual totem, no totem, battery or full ES with regen.

Should be pretty straightforward.

Alright thanks for the info I'll start a build like that once I hit a wall with my current Templar haha

@Fencers
I'll be sure to take your suggestions. I'm not that skilled in these types of games, so I'm probably going to be starting on normal soft core until I get more comfortable. Good to have some pointers for going in though.

I have a few questions. Where to go right now according to plan. I don't feel like I can grab CI just yet. I was planning to grab Z.Oath and the armor+ES passives, then going for the CI. Also, my build is planned for 60 points. Where should I invest if I get further?